Tag: Don Winslow

Amazon's 'Crime 101' Starring Chris Hemsworth & Pedro Pascal To Begin Filming This September, Thriller In The Vein Of 'Heat'
Posted on in Film News, News

Amazon/MGM’s Jewel Heist Pic ‘Crime 101’ Starring Chris Hemsworth & Pedro Pascal To Begin Filming This September

Last year, it was announced that Chris Hemsworth (“Extraction 2”) and Pedro Pascal (“The Last of Us”) would team up for a crime film said to be “in the vein of Michael Mann’s ‘Heat,'” and there is a neat update on where “Crime 101” from director Bart Layton (“American Animals”) is currently at in the development/prep stage.

Author Don Winslow (his novella of the same name adapted for the pic) has shared an update on Twitter, confirming that Amazon MGM Studios has acquired “Crime 101” after a bidding war with Netflix and that the film will begin shooting sometime in September.

Here is the official synopsis for Winslow’s novella, which should give you an idea of what to expect from “Crime 101”:

A string of high-level jewel heists up and down the Pacific Coast Highway has gone unsolved for years, mostly because the perpetrator has lived by a strict code he calls “Crime 101”. Police attribute the thefts to the Colombian cartels. But Detective Lou Lubesnick’s gut says it’s the work of just one man. Now the lone-wolf jewel thief is looking for that fabled final last score, and Lou breaks all the rules of “Crime 101”.

Pascal is a busy bee these days as he’s expected to play Dr. Reed Richards/Mister Fantastic in Marvel’s “Fantastic Four” reboot this summer at Pinewood Studios UK in England and has a July 2025 release date. It’s starting to feel like he’ll move directly from “Fantastic Four” into “Crime 101.”

Hemsworth has been getting a bunch of success with his “Extraction” films on Netflix and will be seen next in George Miller’s “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga.” A fellow MCU actor, Hemsworth, has been teasing his interest in returning to the “Thor” role for a fifth solo film, while rumored online, it’s one that has yet to be made official by Marvel.

This isn’t the only Winslow project in the works, as Oscar-nominee Austin Butler (“Dune: Part Two,” “Elvis”) is attached to star in “City On Fire,” a mobster epic that has been compared to “The Godfather,” which would see Irish and Italian criminal syndicates going to war and is expected to be a franchise-starter for Butler. James Mangold (“Ford v Ferrari”) was also developing a feature film adaptation of “The Force” that had Matt Damon circling the cop thriller at 20th Century Studios.

Amazon MGM Studios has yet to give “Crime 101” an official release date.

SOURCE: DON WINSLOW

Posted on in Film News, News

‘Shibumi’: Warner Bros. & ‘John Wick’ Franchise Director Chad Stahelski Team For Period Assassin Thriller

Director Chad Stahelski is currently in production on John Wick: Chapter 4 in Germany, but the action director isn’t slowing down as he’s attached to yet another project. Deadline reports that Warner Bros. and Stahhelski are teaming to develop a feature film adaptation of Trevanian’s 1979 novel Shibumi.

“Nicholai Hel is the world’s most wanted man. Born in Shanghai during the chaos of World War I, he is the son of an aristocratic Russian mother and a mysterious German father and is the protégé of a Japanese Go master. Hel survived the destruction of Hiroshima to emerge as the world’s most artful lover and its most accomplished—and well-paid—assassin. Hel is a genius, a mystic, and a master of language and culture, and his secret is his determination to attain a rare kind of personal excellence, a state of effortless perfection known only as shibumi.”

“Now living in an isolated mountain fortress with his exquisite mistress, Hel is unwillingly drawn back into the life he’d tried to leave behind when a beautiful young stranger arrives at his door, seeking help and refuge. It soon becomes clear that Hel is being tracked by his most sinister enemy—a supermonolith of international espionage known only as the Mother Company. The battle lines are drawn: ruthless power and corruption on one side, and on the other . . . shibumi.”

The book made a brief cameo in the original John Wick as the airport security guard is spotted reading it, the story likely had a direct influence on the world of high-end assassins inhabited by John Wick and could be an excellent follow-up once Stahelski completes John Wick: Chapter 5, said to be the final installment.

A previous incarnation of Shibumi had Keanu Reeves attached, but no actors are currently involved with it. Its period setting could help separate it from the more modern John Wick films.

Interestingly enough, American author Don Winslow penned another Nicholai Hel book called Satori and could give Warner Bros. source material for another film leading to a new franchise.

“It is the fall of 1951, and the Korean War is raging. Twenty-six-year-old Nicholai Hel has spent the last three years in solitary confinement at the hands of the Americans. Hel is a master of hoda korosu, or “naked kill,” is fluent in seven languages, and has honed extraordinary “proximity sense”-an extra-awareness of the presence of danger. He has the skills to be the world’s most fearsome assassin and now the CIA needs him.”

“The Americans offer Hel freedom, money, and a neutral passport in exchange for one small service: to go to Beijing and kill the Soviet Union’s commissioner to China. It’s almost certainly a suicide mission, but Hel accepts. Now he must survive chaos, violence, suspicion, and betrayal while trying to achieve his ultimate goal of satori-the possibility of true understanding and harmony with the world.”

It might be a long time before we ultimately see Shibumi hit the big screen.

John Wick 5 isn’t the only project Stahelski is also involved with as Lionsgate’s Highlander reboot is one of them with Henry Cavill in talks for a lead role, Sony Pictures has assigned him to helm a feature adaptation of their popular samurai video game Ghost of Tsushima, and the New Line Cinema hybrid action movie Classified (called Die Hard meets Indiana Jones).

SOURCE: DEADLINE